... actually Blade 50 will get you through the vast majority of Blade checks :D
(though some of them would then require you to also have 50 in another skill to add together)
Omg yes, sorry, I meant it would be odd if you could pass a rhetoric check with Blade 50 - sometimes you can dupe your way through checks with secondary skills (i.e. breaking into places with Deception instead of Intrusion), but I understand there's a limit on how much sense that makes writing-wise! Like, I image Zorana doing sick sword tricks to impress Erilotti at the reception and Erilotti just being like ... okay we will not be voting for this one. So blade seems to have less checks than deception, which makes sense in-story but gameplay-wise makes blade feel exponentially weaker than deception to level.